That scale of operations provides Coursera with an interesting perspective on global skills development trends, many of which are reflected in the recently released .

Among its key findings, the report highlights the importance of micro-credentials for building and maintaining an agile workforce. “By 2030, an estimated 92 million jobs will be displaced, while 170 million new ones will be created—a net gain of 78 million roles,” says the report. “Eighty-five percent of employers say they need to upskill their workforce just to keep pace, and 70% plan to hire talent with new capabilities in areas like data science, cloud computing, and GenAI. This transformation means micro-credentials are more vital than ever for establishing skills and career readiness.”

Just over nine in ten employers (91%) say that employees with micro credentials demonstrate better command of core competencies. A similar proportion of employees (94%) with micro credentials say the qualifications have accelerated their career development and allowed them to be more competitive in a quickly changing labour market.

Coursera reports that those patterns are playing out within its own enrolment base with “positive growth” in Professional Certificate enrolments in all global regions, including a 37% increase in North America (the highest globally) and 36% growth in the Middle East and North Africa year-over-year.

The report highlights as well the surging demand in some quickly expanding and evolving fields of work, notably Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity.

The report says of the former: “In 2023, early adopters flocked to GenAI, with approximately one person per minute enrolling in a GenAI course on Coursera – a rate that rose to eight per minute in 2024. Since then, GenAI has continued to see exceptional growth, with global enrolment in GenAI courses surging 195% year-over-year—maintaining its position as one of the most rapidly growing skill domains on our platform. To date, Coursera has recorded over 8 million GenAI enrolments, with 12 learners per minute signing up for GenAI content in 2025 across our catalog of nearly 700 GenAI courses.”

Employer surveys over that same period highlight the competitive advantage for candidates with GenAI skills, with labour market demand for roles in AI technology expected to expand by another 40% within the next four years. “Mastering AI fundamentals – from prompt engineering to large
language model (LLM) applications – is essential to remaining competitive in today’s rapidly evolving economy,” concludes the report.

Following growing worldwide concerns around data security and data protection, a similar pattern is playing out across Coursera’s Cybersecurity catalogue. Year-over-year growth in Cybersecurity courses on the platform reached 106% in Latin America, 20% in Europe, and 14% in Asia Pacific in 2025. But the report nevertheless identifies a significant and widespread labour market gap in this area: “Globally, nearly five million additional cybersecurity professionals are needed, and
two-thirds of employers cite skill gaps as a barrier to adopting emerging technology. Security
Management Specialist ranks among the top five fastest-growing roles, yet less than half of organizations feel ‘highly prepared’ to defend against AI-driven cyber threats.”

Skills training alongside degrees

“Two-thirds of employers regard skill shortages as a major barrier to business growth,” notes the report, “and in countries like Germany, unfilled vacancies cost an estimated US$339 billion (1.3% of GDP).”

The vast majority of employers surveyed by Coursera say that they have adopted or are exploring skills-based hiring – an approach that focuses on skills qualifications in combination with traditional degrees.

Those broad patterns carry with them some important implications for international educators including the need to demonstrate career linkages and outcomes at every level of study, the opportunity to combine more traditional qualifications with alternate credentials (including micro credentials), and the potential of combining more conventional modes of delivery on campus with remote learning or transnational education in order to support graduates in continuing skills training.

For additional background, please see:

• “Are employers recognising alternative credentials in hiring decisions?“
• “New study highlights the expanding landscape of microcredentials“
• “The growing importance of non-degree credentials“

The post The surging demand for skills training in a rapidly changing global economy appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

edX was founded as a non-profit enterprise a decade ago by Harvard President Larry Bacow and MIT President Rafael Reif. Its compelling premise was offering users all over the world the ability to access a Harvard or MIT class – for free.

While it has remained a prominent MOOC platform, edX has struggled to compete with platforms such as Coursera in recent years. All MOOC platforms have faced challenges in finding a balance between an altruistic mission of expanding access to affordable education and the reality of needing to generate sufficient operational revenues, and all now offer for-fee study options as well as free courses. In 2018, edX began to monetise some parts of its offerings, including a requirement that students pay for verified certification after completing their courses.

While experts are , most agree that the development signals increasing investment in online programme delivery, a trend ushered in by the pandemic and the resulting movement of students online – whether students liked it or not. There is little doubt that going forward, universities will be offering many of their programmes at least partly online, both to offset risk in the event of another catastrophe and to expand their reach into other countries.

Sean Gallagher, founder and executive director of Northeastern University’s Center for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy, told leading edtech news source Edsurge that,

“The deal is a sign that the once-distinct lines between MOOCs, online degree programmes and on-campus programs have blurred. For me, the big story here is this continued consolidation of market leadership in online learning. Scale matters, and the big are getting bigger.”

Both commercial and non-profit mandates

called the acquisition a “surprise end” to edX because of edX’s non-profit orientation; 2U is squarely a commercial enterprise. MIT President Rafael explained in an open letter that being a non-profit was becoming increasingly unsustainable for edX in part because of the effects of the pandemic:

“COVID drove an explosion in remote learning, which spurred huge investments into edX’s commercial competitors. This put edX, as a nonprofit, at a financial disadvantage. This new path recognizes this reality and offers a solution that allows edX to continue to support and maintain the key aspects of its mission.”

2U’s acquisition of edX will allow it to access edX’s 39 million users all over the world and promote the degree programmes and other credentials offered by 2U’s university partners to this global user base. This will be a commercial enterprise, and 2U’s bet is that this new audience will allow it to reduce the cost of acquiring students for its programmes.

Meanwhile, edX founders Harvard and MIT will use the assets from the sale to manage a new, as-yet-unnamed non-profit to continue to develop the open-source online learning platform they created a decade ago.

Presidents Bacow and Reif added,

“Today’s announcement will carry forward this mission on a whole new scale, connecting many more learners with a wider range of high-quality options for content, credentials, and degrees. With online education rapidly changing, it’s the right moment for this leap of evolution for edX.” 

That the presidents’ statement includes mention of “credentials” is worth a special note: when edX was founded in 2012, the focus was on providing courses linked to degree programmes. Over the past couple of years, students have shown increasing demand for shorter programmes such as micro-credentials and diplomas. Employer recognition of these mini-programmes has also been growing, and formal qualification frameworks are also beginning to make more space for alternative credentials.

The online marketplace is changing

Some industry experts believe that the combination of 2U and edX operations represents a new level of competition for the world’s online learners, and that the acquisition poses a threat to Coursera. Others argue that edX has sold out as a result of combining forces with profit-motivated 2U, and that Coursera will actually gain an ideological edge among colleges and learners. As s Dhawal Shaw notes, even though many courses on leading MOOCs are longer free, most remain affordable compared to what students would pay for on-campus courses at a leading university. By contrast, “2U’s online degrees … are often just as expensive as their on-campus counterparts.” Mr Shaw believes the edX user base is mostly incompatible with 2U’s pricing, saying “the high cost of 2U programmes make them inaccessible to most of the world.”

2U’s gamble is that they can convert enough EdX users to more expensive courses to make the cost of their acquisition worthwhile and to allow them to scale in a way they couldn’t have otherwise. Whether or not it pays off, there is little doubt that the global audience for fee-based online courses has surged. More acquisitions and mergers are to be expected as a result, and the traditional model of universities offering exclusively in-person instruction may soon be history.

For additional background, please see:

• “New study highlights the expanding landscape of microcredentials”
• “What about the 20 million students who didn’t study abroad last year?”
• “Coursera filing provides insights into revenue drivers for online learning”

The post Major MOOC provider edX acquired by online program manager 2U appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

But the momentum towards offering new degrees now appears to be slowing among MOOC providers according to Class Central’s .

The background on online degrees

Degrees are in most cases than micro-credentials. Sean Gallagher writes in his book that “they represent a greater level of commitment, depth, achievement and perseverance” and “an achievement that is distinct from simply mastering the knowledge and skills in a particular programme.”

For universities, the option of offering MOOC degrees also allowed them to broaden their programmes and revenue models. “Exclusivity is not the brand differentiator that it used to be,” Michael Feldstein, publisher of the and a consultant who helps universities choose partners with whom to launch their programmes (known as OPMs or Online Programme Managers) told . “The top-tier schools don’t need to be exclusive anymore to maintain their reputation.”

So far experts agree that there is wide variability in how well universities and their chosen OPM and MOOC providers are delivering their degrees.

Feldstein adds, “Whether you’re reaching students in the other parts of the globe or reaching non-traditional students in the United States, universities are not wired to do that yet. They’ve never had to … Chances are pretty good that they are not doing it the best way possible yet. They’re just experimenting.”

Slower degree growth

In 2018 Coursera, edX, FutureLearn, and Udacity released 29 new degrees among them. In 2019, there were only 11 new degrees from these providers. This is still growth, but obviously at a more modest pace.

Meanwhile, the number of “traditional” MOOC courses leading to micro-credentials, badges, certificates is increasing at a faster rate. Mr Gallagher writes in that “by leveraging algorithms and operating at truly disruptive price points, these programmes are less expensive for colleges to operate and market, and less expensive for the student.”

In other words, universities appear to find it more affordable and effective to expand their micro-programmes than their degree offerings. The marketing investment associated with reaching prospects for online graduate degrees, for example, is extremely high, especially regarding the fees paid to OPMs. by Eduventures Research, a division of ACT/NRCCUA, found that OPMs “take anywhere between 30% and 80% of the revenue the online degree programmes bring into the schools.”  

Degrees aside, millions more new users for MOOCs

The number of new MOOC users is across the four platforms. Coursera – which reached a valuation of over USD$1B in 2019 – moved from 37 million to 45 million in 2019. EdX moved from 18 million to 24 million; Udacity went from 10 million to 11.5 million; and UK-based Future-learn added more than a million users for a 2019 total of 10 million.

Class Central counted 14 million users on China’s XuetangX at the end of 2018. Class Central offers no 2019 figures for the platform but says that it now has 24 million.

Overall Class Central estimates that there were 110 million people in the world enrolled in MOOCs in 2019, based on the MOOC platforms whose data was available to them.

SWAYAM hopes to revolutionise Indian higher education

Outside of Western-based MOOCs and XuetangX, there are millions of learners on India-based (10 million). SWAYAM, which offers all of its courses for free to extend access to higher education in India – is also integrated into India’s traditional higher education system. Public higher education institutions may offer students the opportunity to complete up to 20% of their degrees online on SWAYAM. It’s a fascinating model:

“Twice a year, institutions pick  they’ll grant credit for in the upcoming term. Note that they may pick courses offered by other institutions, allowing them to tap into the strengths of schools nationwide to build richer curricula. For instance, they may leverage SWAYAM to offer high-demand courses for which they lack qualified instructors on campus.

Students may then register for relevant, credit-eligible online courses and, upon completion, have them count toward their degree. Courses typically involve watching lectures, submitting assignments, and sitting an exam in one of the 1,000 exam centres established across India.”

Growth slowing but numbers still massive

The number of new users on MOOC platforms may not be growing as quickly as in past years, but the user base remains staggering. As Ray Schroeder notes in :

“The MOOC did not die. Rather, it grew up into a mature, fully functional degree platform that is serving millions of learners globally on a daily basis. At-scale learning is too large to ignore. It is changing the learning environment worldwide. In less than a decade, this phenomenon has moved from the fringes of education to the .”

Despite grumblings about low completion rates attached to many MOOCs, a 2015 study, “Who’s Benefiting from MOOCs, and Why” published in Harvard Business Review found that “of the respondents who had completed individual MOOCs, 72% reported career benefits and 61% reported educational benefits.”

For additional background, please see:

• “The year in MOOCs: Increased revenue and more degrees”
• “Private partners helping to drive growth of higher education online”
• “Major MOOC providers shifting focus to fee-paying students”

The post Slower growth in new MOOC degrees but online learning is alive and well appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

First, some numbers. Total enrolment passed the 100 million student threshold for the first time last year to reach 101 million learners worldwide. This represents somewhat slower year-over-year growth than was the case in 2017, but still amounts to a brisk 30% increase in total student numbers for 2018.

As of year end, more than 900 universities around the world had roughly 11,400 MOOCs on offer, with about 2,000 new courses added during 2018. Class Central makes the additional, interesting observation that the number of courses continues to grow more quickly than the number of MOOC students and “since user growth hasn’t kept up, each course is getting fewer users.”

Total number of MOOCs available, 2012–2019. Source: Class Central

The pecking order among major providers has not changed from last year. Coursera remains the clear leader with 37 million learners, followed by edX (18 million), China’s XuetangX with 14 million (down from an estimated 18 million in 2017), and Udacity (10 million). The UK’s FutureLearn platform (and its nearly nine million students) rounds out the top five global providers.

Follow the money

Beyond those high-level trends, Class Central reports an increasing focus on revenue growth among major MOOC platforms again last year, driven by growth in user-pay options (including an expanding field of micro credentials and other qualifications), a growing volume of corporate training contracts, and the continuing expansion of full online degree programmes. Commenting on this shift, Class Central CEO Dhawal Shah says, “I remain hopeful that these new business models will act as a safeguard of free content, ensuring its continued availability for those who need it, regardless of their ability to pay. However, one thing is abundantly clear: free users are no longer a focus.”

There was indeed a big jump in the number of online degrees offered through MOOC platforms last year. By the end of 2018, 45 full MOOC-based degrees had been announced or launched. This represents a tripling from the 15 full degrees on offer in 2017.

But as Class Central also points out, most of these new degrees are at a very early stage and enrolment remains highly concentrated among only a few online programmes. “The first online degrees by Coursera, Udacity, and edX have done well, with combined potential revenue of over $80-million based on numbers of currently enrolled students,” says Mr Shah. “Over 10,000 students are currently enrolled in a MOOC-based degree program. But the bulk of those of enrolled students come from just two universities and three online degrees: the Online Master’s Degree in Computer Science (Georgia Tech with Udacity), the Online Master of Science in Analytics (Georgia Tech with edX), and the iMBA (University of Illinois Urbana Champaign with Coursera).”

The overall picture for 2018 is one of a continuing mainstreaming of online learning. The growing reach and impact of major MOOC platforms is one indication of this, but so too are the direct online offerings of a growing number of universities and colleges around the world – and the increasing integration of online learning with on-campus provision for many institutions.

For additional background, please see:

• “Major MOOC providers shifting focus to fee-paying students”
• “Leading MOOC provider announces full degree programmes”
• “Study explores adoption of online learning and its relationship to student mobility”

The post The year in MOOCs: Increased revenue and more degrees appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

, and it points to an overall slowing of enrolment growth in the MOOC space during the year.

However, put a large asterisk next to the term “slowing”. By Class Central’s reckoning, there were 78 million students enrolled in MOOCs in 2017, a roughly 35% increase over the 58 million students who registered for at least one course in 2016. This is indeed a slowdown from the year-over-year doubling of global enrolment that we saw between 2014 and 2016. But most providers in many sectors would no doubt still consider 35% growth from one year to the next a nice bit of forward progress.

The top five MOOC providers by enrolment (in millions of students), 2017. Source: Class Central

Perhaps more significantly, 2017 also marked a continuing trend of MOOC providers sharpening their focus on students that are prepared to pay for online learning. “Originally, all MOOCs were offered as free courses,” says Class Central. “While content varied greatly from course to course, MOOC providers essentially offered a single product: university courses packaged for online audiences and offered free of charge. The big MOOC providers have now developed products and services that range in price from free (or partially free) to costing millions of dollars.”

The revenue models for MOOCs have evolved quickly over the last few years, and now range from options for students to pay additional fees to earn certificates or course credits to enrolment in full degree programmes to larger corporate training programmes. The world’s leading MOOC provider by enrolment, Coursera, reportedly saw its base of fee-paying students increase by 70% from 2016 to 2017. The fifth-ranked MOOC platform, Udacity, now also has more than 50,000 fee-paying students in its Nanodegree programmes.

A lot of this growth in the fee-paying student base appears to be driven by students from outside the typical target groups for higher education institutions. As Class Central notes, “The real audience for [MOOCs] is not the traditional university student but what [former Coursera CEO Rick Levin] calls the ‘lifelong career learner’: someone who might be well beyond their college years, but takes online courses with the goal of achieving professional and career growth.”

Some MOOC providers, including sector leaders Coursera and EdX, have also ramped up their offerings for mid-career professionals through larger-scale corporate training programmes.

More degrees on the horizon

Also of note this year, MOOC providers are continuing to expand their full-degree offerings. Some of the early examples in this space include high-profile online degrees, such as the Masters of Science in Computer Science offered in partnership by Udacity and Georgia Tech. That programme has now enrolled 6,000 students, and other such university-MOOC provider partnerships around degree programmes are also showing strong results.

Strong enough that MOOC providers are launching even more degree options over the next two years. Coursera has said that it will launch between 15 and 20 new degree programmes by 2019. And Class Central adds that, “FutureLearn has announced that they will launch 50 degrees in partnership with Coventry University. XuetangX also announced three online Master’s degrees with Zhengzhou University.”

EdX, meanwhile, is reportedly underway with a new effort to launch a series of “MicroBachelor” programmes – a new model that is designed to break a traditional undergraduate degree down into a series of modular components. The company has not said much about the project so far but it has filed a trademark application for the term “MicroBachelors”, and CEO Anant Agarwal has clearly indicated that such modular programming is an important part of the company’s strategy going forward.

Speaking at a recent innovation summit hosted by the US Department of Education,  that the company intends to build on its successful MicroMasters degrees with this new undergraduate model: “We will launch MicroBachelors within the next year or two and do the same modularization with the bachelor’s degree [as with the MicroMasters model].” The early thinking around such programming seems to be built around the idea that such programmes are again not for traditional university students. Rather, they are for students who could not attend a conventional on-campus degree programme, but that may want to use any such micro credentials as a ladder to degree studies online, or even on campus.

With all of these trends and examples in mind, we might say that there is certainly a competitive issue here for any higher education institutions that explicitly target mid-career professionals in their recruitment efforts. Equally, there are important strategic implications here for any institutions who aim to expand their recruiting efforts or programming for mid-career professionals or other lifelong learners who have been unable to pursue conventional degree programmes on campus.

“Over half a decade since their debut, MOOCs may finally have found their footing and a sustainable revenue model,” concludes Class Central. “No, they didn’t disrupt universities, but they may have changed how working professionals access continued learning and career advancement opportunities…Who knows, 2017 could just have been the year MOOCs became big business.”

For additional background, please see:

• “Global MOOC enrolment jumped again last year”
• “Rolling out the first large-scale scholarship programmes for MOOCs”
• “How do students benefit from MOOCs?”

The post Major MOOC providers shifting focus to fee-paying students appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

We also have two prominent, and recent cases, illustrating how a decline in scholarship funding can profoundly and quickly impact outbound mobility: Saudi Arabia’s massive Keeper of the Two Holy Mosques Scholarship Programme (previously the King Abdullah Scholarship Programme, or KASP) and Brazil’s Science Without Borders (Ciência sem Fronteiras, or CsF).

And now this year ushers in as well the first really large-scale scholarship programmes targeted to MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Online learning has reached a new level of prominence over the last two years, with total enrolment estimated at 58 million worldwide in 2016. We are also seeing a rapid expansion in both the availability of online degrees from traditional higher education institutions as well as the emergence of alternate credentials from major MOOC platforms, such as edX’s “MicroMasters” or Udacity’s .

These are major trends that can be expected to act on traditional modes of delivery for higher education in the years ahead.

Now add to this the participation of tech and information giants in funding a further expansion of enrolment in online learning. In a joint announcement earlier this month, Google and Bertelsmann launched a scholarship programme that will fund 75,000 students in  programmes this year.

Google will support 60,000 scholarships in Web and Android Development, 40,000 of which will be reserved for those with no programming experience at all and 20,000 for junior developers with one-to-three years of experience. Bertelsmann will fund a further 15,000 places in the field of Data Science.

“Bertelsmann’s businesses are becoming steadily more digital,” says Bertelsmann’s Head of Talent Management Hays Steilberg. “Accordingly, digital skills and IT expertise are becoming increasingly important, especially in data science. We see it as our responsibility to make as many people as possible fit for the demanding, IT-based tasks of tomorrow’s working world.”

This year’s expanded effort builds on a pilot from 2016 which saw 70,000 European students apply for 10,000 funded spots in Udacity programmes. Aside from the greater number of scholarship spaces this year, the programme has expanded its eligibility to include students from Egypt, Israel, Russia, and Turkey.

Both corporations are already heavily invested in training, and in the last few years alone Google has trained more than three million people in the EU. Bertelsmann’s focus has historically been on training its own staff, which already have access to more than 10,000 online courses as well as those offered at  (one of the first corporate universities in Germany). But both companies are now opening the field even further with this year’s Udacity scholarships.

Udacity CEO Vish Makhijani adds, “We’re excited to be working closely with Google and Bertelsmann to continue training new talent in Europe and beyond. In less than 9 months, 75,000 people in the region will have the needed skills to advance their careers and shape the digital future. The success stories from the first cohort are inspiring and we look forward to welcoming even more students into the scholarship programme next month.”

By enrolment, Udacity is the fifth-largest MOOC platform in the world with an estimated four million registered users in 2016. Class Central reports that  were enrolled in Nanodegree programmes with Udacity last year.

For additional background, please see:

• “Online learning still expected to pressure traditional higher education models”
• “Global MOOC enrolment jumped again last year”
• “Online enrolment in US continues to grow”
• “Opening the door to new learning models”

The post Rolling out the first large-scale scholarship programmes for MOOCs appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

Helping to fuel this growth, the number of courses on offer continues to climb quickly as well. There were 2,600 new courses announced in 2016 (up from 1,800 the previous year), bringing the worldwide total to nearly 7,000 online courses offered by 700 universities.

Number of MOOC courses available worldwide, 2012-2016. Source: Class Central

By number of courses on offer, Coursera remains the clear leader among MOOC providers with 1,700 active courses, followed by edX (1,300 courses) and the UK-based FutureLearn platform (480 courses).

But 2016 was notable as well for the rising profile of regional players in the MOOC space, including Miríada X, which, based in Latin America, offers 350 courses in Spanish. China’s Tsinghua University-backed is another rising platform with more than 300 Chinese-language courses.

In fact, XuetangX breaks into the top five MOOC providers this year, in terms of ranking by number of registrants. Here again, Coursera remains the clear leader with an enrolment base of 23 million students. EdX holds the number two spot with ten million registrations, but XuetangX turns up as the third-largest MOOC provider this year – and the only non-English platform in the top five – on the strength of its six million students. FutureLearn (5.3 million) and Udacity (4 million) round out the roster of top providers for 2016.

More broadly, Class Central notes that roughly one in four first-time MOOC registrants were enrolled with regional providers last year, and forecasts a growing role for such non-English platforms, which, along with Miríada X and XuetangX, include France Université Numérique and MENA’s Edraak.

Other notable MOOC trends observed in 2016 include the following.

• A move to self-pace learning. Class Central points out as well that, rather than being offered just once or twice a year, many online MOOCs are now offered as self-paced courses with new sessions often beginning monthly or even bi-weekly. “This switch has led to a significant increase in the number of courses students can register for and start almost immediately,” notes the report. “This means that instead of tens of thousands of people learning together, many students are learning at their own pace and in much smaller cohorts.”

• A continuing emphasis on monetising MOOC studies, both in terms of the expansion of fee-based programmes but also the decline of so-called stand-alone courses. Rather than such one-off courses, providers are more focused this year on offerings tied to MOOC certificates or other credentials.

Class Central founder Dhawal Shah adds, “The range of features and experiences that were once free have dramatically shrunk over the last couple years, raising the question of how ‘open’ MOOCs truly are. Taking the course simultaneously with thousands of learners is no longer a selling point of MOOCs (from a course providers perspective). There’s been a decisive shift to focus on ‘professional’ learners who are taking these courses for career-related outcomes, over the dabblers and lifelong learners who take courses just for curiosity’s sake.”

Overall, the picture for 2016 (and into 2017) is of a rapidly expanding enrolment base for online learning, and of courses that are neither as massive nor as open as they were even a couple of years ago.

These trends align in turn with a growing emphasis in international education on exporting education services via distance or distributed learning on the part of such leading destinations as the UK or Australia.

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The prevailing wisdom about MOOC students (and fair enough because most of these observations are based in a number of credible studies of online learners) has it that registrants tend to be young, employed, well-educated, and male. And in the relatively short history of MOOCs, most of those students have come from North America or Europe.

But less is known about MOOC students in developing countries, and the team from the Technology and Social Change Group (TASCHA) at the University of Washington set out to try and fill this gap with that encompassed both users and non-users of MOOCs in three emerging markets: Colombia, the Philippines, and South Africa.

“Many people assumed that in developing countries, MOOCs would only be used by the rich and well-educated,” said lead researcher Maria Garrido, research assistant professor at TASCHA. “We were excited to find that this is not the case. Many users come from low- and middle-income backgrounds with varying levels of education and technology skills.”

The TASCHA team surveyed a sample of 1,400 MOOC users aged 18–35 across the three countries, and a further cohort of 2,254 non‐users (also aged 18–35 years). The survey responses were then rounded out with interviews with government officials, educators, and employers in all three countries.

Study sample details across all three countries. Source: TASCHA

Who are these students?

TASCHA found that neither income nor technical expertise are barriers to MOOC study in developing countries. “Income level does not determine young people’s engagement with MOOCs,” notes the study report. Eight in ten MOOC learners in the survey were low or middle-income, in contrast to the relatively higher-income students that are more typically observed in North America or Europe.

Most respondents (70%) were 30 years old or younger. One in four had completed high school, another third had completed vocational studies, and the rest had a first university degree or better. Most were also either employed (60%) or enrolled in school (36%).

Interestingly, the MOOC users in the study were not characterised by advanced computer skills. Eight in ten had only basic or intermediate-level technical skills, a finding that challenges the another prevailing idea that MOOCs are for those with more advanced information technology skills. Indeed, the study found that, among non-users, lack of awareness was by far the biggest barrier to MOOC studies (79% had never heard of MOOCs). Among those non-users who did know something about MOOCs, most (50%) were prevented simply by a lack of time to pursue their studies.

The population of MOOC users in the three study countries skewed younger, and was from more diverse educational backgrounds, compared to learners in developed countries.

Why are they studying?

When it comes to developed countries, the report points out, “Students enrol in MOOCs with different goals in mind. Satisfying their curiosity and advancing their jobs are two of the most common reasons. While participants enrol with the specific intention to obtain a certificate, or even multiple certificates, many others are less interested in working through a full course.” That is, students in developed countries commonly enrol in MOOCs out of curiosity, personal interest, or for the sake of sampling the course material. It is also generally observed that such students tend to complete their courses far less often.

In contrast, TASCHA found that learners in developing countries were much more focused on career development. More than six in ten (61%) said their main motivation for taking an online course was to gain specific job skills. Another 37% were trying to obtain a specific professional certification, and another notable group (39%) said their main reason for signing up was to prepare for further education.

Main motivations for taking a MOOC, respondents from Colombia, the Philippines, and South Africa. Source: TASCHA

The study found some variance in motivation by income level: “In terms of income, the top three categories for low‐income users are learning skills to succeed in a new job (57%), preparing for professional certification or exam (54%), and finding a new job (53%). For medium‐income users, the top three are learning skills to succeed in a new job (50%), earning a promotion in current job (49%), and starting a new business. However, for high‐income users, the top three are starting a new business (44%), finding a new job (43%), and learning skills to succeed in a new job (42%). Thus, the priorities of different income categories do seem to differ slightly in how they perceive the benefits of MOOCs. However, the general trend is consistently that users with low incomes rate MOOCs as more important in every category than those with medium or high incomes.”

Given the very strong focus of these learners on career and/or further education goals, perhaps it is not surprising that the study also found that completion and certification rates of learners from developing countries far exceed those of their counterparts in North America or Europe. Nearly half (49%) of MOOC users in the survey received at least one certification, and another 30% completed at least one course.

Admittedly, data on completion rates in developed countries is a little fuzzy but most estimates settle on course completions in the range of 5-10% of all MOOC students. The completion rates observed for learners in the Colombia, the Philippines, and South Africa far exceed these norms, and completion rates were higher still – an attention-grabbing 70% – among the currently employed, underscoring once again the strong career orientation among MOOC learners in the study.

Also reflecting the strong employability orientation that we see across the survey results, most students in developing countries were enrolled in computer sciences, language studies, or business and management courses. “In Colombia and the Philippines, close to 40% of users enrol in computer science MOOCs compared to only 25% in South Africa, with a third of women in the first two countries reporting enrolling in these courses. Language courses are more popular in Colombia and the Philippines, with almost a third of users engaging in a language MOOC, compared with only 9% in South Africa.”

Most responding students indicated that they found their way to their MOOC courses via online searches, recommendations from their current teachers or professors, or through word-of-mouth referrals from friends or family.

These discovery paths, along with the study’s findings regarding the profile and motivations of MOOC learners in developing countries, open up some interesting questions for international educators. Could MOOCs represent a new and viable channel for reaching a larger field of prospects in developing economies? One of the commonly accepted strategic rationales for MOOCs, from an institution’s point of view, is that it can enhance the institutional brand, introduce the institution or school to a wider field of students, and open up new recruitment channels for online programmes, transnational education pathways, or studies abroad.

The findings from the TASCHA study certainly add some weight to this argument and offer some new insights on the expanding population of MOOC learners worldwide for educators and marketers alike.

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